TURKEY: Turkish Airlines Posts Record Profits

Turkey’s national flag-carrier, Turkish Airlines, announced a record operating net profit of 2.99 billion Turkish Liras ($1.01 billion) for last year on March 1, with a 65 percent increase from a year earlier.

This was the first time the annual profit of the company exceeded $1 billion.

The gross real operating profit stood at $895 million, another record for the company.

In a statement, the airline said sales revenue increased by 19 percent in liras, reaching 28.75 billion liras ($9.7 billion) at the year-end.

The number of destinations served by the flag carrier rose from 264 to 284 in the last quarter of 2014, including 49 domestic and 235 international destinations in 113 countries, the company said.

The airline’s capacity also increased by 13.6 percent in 2015, with the airline serving 61.2 million passengers over the year on 453,000 flights and an occupancy capacity of 78 percent. Capacity is essentially calculated by multiplying the available seats by kilometers.

The margin of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 24.5 percent to $2.6 billion.

“First of all, we finished 2015, a difficult year for Turkey and the world, extremely positive,” Chairman İlker Aycı said.

“Despite the strong competitive environment among the world’s leading players, political and economic instability in the region and severe operating conditions such as currency fluctuations, the airline has maintained its position among the most profitable airlines in 2015,” he added.

The company now employs some 47,000 people.

With 33 new planes bought last year and five more this year, the fleet of Turkish Airlines contains 219 narrow body planes, 75 wide body planes and 10 cargo planes.

More than 70 percent of the company’s sales are to foreign countries, making it Turkey’s largest exporter, earning $7 billion last year.

Turkish Airlines reported in November of last year a nine-month 2015 consolidated net profit at $877 million, 21 percent up from $685 million in the same period in 2014.